Study for my Heroes in the Street (Stan)

1986

39.75H x 29W inches

Ian Wallace

year born: 1943
gender: male
nationality: British
home town: Shoreham, United Kingdom

Wallace says of his Heroes in the Street series, “The street is the site, metaphorically as well as in actuality, of all the forces of society and economics imploded upon the individual, who, moving within the dense forest of symbols of the modern city, can achieve the status of the heroic.” The hero in Study for my Heroes in the Street (Stan) is the photoconceptual artist Stan Douglas, who is depicted here (and also included in the Kadist Collection) as an archetypal figure restlessly drifting the streets of the modern world. Patches of canvas cover parts of this otherwise representational photograph and ask the viewer to consider the role that editing and play in our perception of the urban landscape and modernity.


British-born and Vancouver-based, Ian Wallace is known for his conceptual art practice and critical writings. Since the mid-1980s, the artist has explored the relationship between documentary photography—often featuring sites of urban development—and abstract monochrome painting, to investigate the characteristics of media-specificity and the limitations of representation.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Photo-Conceptualism, » Conceptual Photography, » Vancouver School, » Appropriation Art, » Canadian, » Conceptual Art, » Cultural Commentary, » British

Michigan Central Station
© » KADIST

Stan Douglas

1997

Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...

Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

Ponderosa Pine IV
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1991

Ponderosa Pine IV belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that live in Northern California...

Alistair Fate
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1994

Alistair Fate (1994) depicts, presumably, a member of the LGBT community...

Mike and Sky
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1993

Like many of Opie’s works, Mike and Sky presents female masculinity to defy a binary understanding of gender...

Person with Pillow: Desire, Lust, Fate
© » KADIST

John Baldessari

1991

The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive...

Plug the well ( July / August 2003)
© » KADIST

Keith Tyson

The work of Keith Tyson is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and embraces the complexity and interconnectedness of existence...

South Africa Righteous Space
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....

Freeway Series
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1994

Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS

Martin Creed

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...

Espadrilles
© » KADIST

Rosalind Nashashibi

2019

Rosalind Nashashibi’s paintings incorporate motifs drawn from her day-to-day environment, often reworked with multiple variations...

Bread and Roses
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Bread and Roses takes its name from a phrase famously used on picket signs and immortalized by the poet James Oppenheim in 1911...

Untitled (San Francisco)
© » KADIST

Edward Kienholz

1984

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...

Raven (gun)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...

Made in Heaven
© » KADIST

Mark Leckey

2004

In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...

Line describing a cone
© » KADIST

Anthony McCall

1973

The film Line Describing a Cone was made in 1973 and it was projected for the first time at Fylkingen (Stockholm) on 30 August of the same year...

BC/AD
© » KADIST

Ian Breakwell

2008

“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...